Last night was the Gala event for the 13th annual Leo Awards. The best of British Columbia's TV & movie industry gathered to hand out their top awards. This years event was held at the Hotel Vancouver, after a scheduling change prevented them from holding it at their usual place, the Westing Bayshore. With the change in venue came a few challenges.

The most notable challenge was the red carpet set up on Georgia street. In the past, at the Bayshore, the carpet was set up along a very quiet and spacious sidewalk along side the hotels convention centre. This set up was great for everyone involved, as it was spacious & well lit with natural light when it is sunny. This year however, the red carpet was set up on the sidewalk of a mains treet that dozens of people use every minute. The carpet itself took up about 2/3 of the sidewalk, leaving a slim 3-5 ft ledge for fans & onlookers, uncredited media, autograph hounds & passer bys to navigate, with a lane of a busy thoroughfare just behind them. Thankfully for the awards there was no incidents with traffic hitting any people, despite many people, myself included, occasionally using the 1st lave of the street to walk in.

The cast of "Sanctuary" was the front & centre draw of the television side of the awards for the mostpart. With the loss of "Stargate Universe" this year, the gang from Sanctuary made up a lot larger portion of this years TV representation. SGU did have 1 representitive there, Jennifer Spence, a nominee for Best supprting actress in a drama, but failed to win, losing out to Lucia Walters from "Life Unexpected" in their 1 & only nomination as well. Ryan Robbins did bring home a solo award for the Sanctuary cast in the Best Supporting male category.

Many of the more notable Vancouver based shows won some awards as well. Fox sci-fi hit "Fringe" lead all TV shows in wins with 3 (tied with Sanctuary) for Cinematogray, Production design & best guest actor for Michael Eklund. "Supernatural" won for best visual effect. "Smallville" won for best program in its final season. "Human Target" won for best stunt co-ordinator.

Smaller shows like "Blackstone", wich won 2 awards walked away with the more notable awards for TV acting. Carmen Moore won the best actress award. The best actor went to Callum Keith Rennie from "Shattered"

In the movie side of the awards, "Gunless" walked away with 4 awards including best prgraom, cinematography, production design & stunt co-ordinator. "Altitude", "Transparency" & "Fathers & Sons" won 2 awards each, the latter taking home best supporting actor Jay Brazeau. Several movies snagged 1 award each, including "Life, Above All", "Amazon Falls" which April Telek took best lead actress, "Tucker And Dale VS Evil" which Tyler Labine took best lead actor & "Repeaters" which Alexia Fast took best supporting actress for.

Other notable winners were Paul McGillion for best lead actor in a short drama movie "A Fine Young Man" (which lead the way with 4 wins in that section..including best program), Shirley Broderikc for best actress in a short drama "The Closer You Get To Canada". "Mighty Jerome" won 4 awards, including best documentary program. "The Haunting Hour" won 4 awards as well in best youth or childrens program, including best show & best performance for Richard Harmon.

"Hiccups" had 5 wins, including best comedy program & best performance for Nancy Robertson, that was the most of anyone at the awards.

So last weekend there was a wrap party for season 1 of the new CW cheerleader drama Hellcats at V Restaraunt in Yaletown. With only a few days left in their shooting schedule, this was the weekend they chose to have it on, as surely next weekend some or all of the cast may have dispersed.

Usually wrap parties see a handful of cast show up, but theres always some missing. The Hellcats cast was surprisingly full, with really only 2 notable secondary cast, Gail O'Grady (Wanda Perkins) & Gale Harold (Prof. Julian Parish). Everyone else I could think of made it.

The first cast members I saw show up were Sharon Leal (Vanessa) & Craig Anderson (Morgan Pepper). Shortly after Ben Cotton (Travis Guthrie) arrived & was willing to chat for a few minutes about the show, his character & his new pilot "Battlestar Galactica Blood & Chrome". Then came the primary cast. First up was Aly Michalka (Marty Perkins) followed shortly after by Ashley Tisdale (Savannah Monroe), Robbie Jones (Lewis Flynn), as well as Heather Hemmens & Matt Barr (Alice Verdura & Dan Patch) who came together. They all showed up within a couple minutes of each other, so there wasnt a lot of chance to interact with all of them. Jeremy Wong (Dawrin) & Alana Randall (Frankie) apparently arrived at some point as well, but I didnt notice them going in.

A couple hours would pass before anything would else would happen. It wasnt till a random Bronson Pelletier (Twilight Saga films) sighting walking by the restaraunt that things seemed to pick up a little. Shortly after seeing him out & about, Hellcats producer, and star of Smallville Tom Welling arrived with an entourage of 3 or 4 people which included co-star Justin Hartley.

Some time would go by again before we saw another random sighting. Nickelback lead singer Chad Kroeger came to hang out with a few friends at the restaraunt downstairs from the party, Earls Restaraunt, which added to a very random night.

First to leave was Ashley Tisdale, who was in a little more happy state coming out than she was going in. She signed for me, but refused to sign for my friend claiming her feet were hurting because of her shoes. I guess they didnt hurt 3 seconds before that???

More cast would slowly make their way out. Ben Cotton & Sharon Leal were next to depart (I cant remember in which order now). Then came the majority of the cast a little later, including Matt Barr & Heather Hemmens coming out together as they went in together.

In between that group and the final group, Chad Kroeger came back out & joked with us as 2 of us were taking his photo asking how thats possible when theres only 1 magazine in town & then saying he hasnt seen so many cameras here since his court case for DUI a few years ago. Then, him & his friends got into a limo (wise choice for a man with a DUI on his record, good to see him planning ahead) and rode off home.

It would be another 45 mins or so before the final batch would come down.Aly Michalka came out with her sister who we never saw arrive, her mom, Tom Welling, Justin Hartley & another female friend.Justin came out first to secure a taxi, and the cab driver was giving him attitude telling him he would only wait "a couple minutes to get out there". Justin went back & told the rest there was a cab there (called the cab driver a "dick" to his group..and rightfully so) only to have it taken from them after the girls insisted the taxi driver take a man who was bleeding perfusely from the head to the hospital, after what can only be assumed was from some type of altercation just up the street. The cab driver was refusing to take the man, but the girls quite insisted & with 8-10 people telling him to, he begrudgingly took the man in more serious need of a ride than the rich celebs who then opted to walk home. Up the street they passed a couple men who had clearly had more than too much to drink who were threatening to throw down right in the middle of the fairly abandoned street. Tom seemed unfased by it & more fascinated to see if they were going to infact fight or not. Justin seemed to be encourageing the girls to just keep moving, as was I. Aly looked quite upset to be seeing it. At that point, I let them go on their way...or so I thought. Little did I know they would get to the next block & stop there for a few minutes, and I would again cross paths with them 1 more time before our nights finally quit crossing paths.Unfortunately, my cameras batteries were on deaths door, so I was being extra picky about taking shots & was really only shooting when I was sure I had a chance for a shot...to top it off, the flash refused to work 3 or 4 times, thus why I have no good Ashley pics, and the Tom pics are quite fuzzy & blurry.. since I had to resort to shooting him without my flash.Pics below of Ben Cotton, Matt Barr, ly Michalka, Heather Hemmens and the Loch Ness Monster, or is it Tom Welling?